Life Time — Attraction in Lenexa

TL;DR:

One star removal is for the lack of workout equipment Lifetime Fitness has for the high volume customers they have. The second star is for the high cost of membership at this gym ($70-$75 monthly).

More details:

A year ago, I chose Planet Fitness over Lifetime Fitness for the cost per month membership. My personal trainer has asked me to switch gyms since Planet Fitness has a lack in variety of equipment. Lifetime Fitness is the only other local gym that has what I need. Unfortunately, during the peak hours of the day, the parking lot is completely packed and the gym equipment is generally occupied. All sacrifice in meal planing and supplementation for the day revolves around getting in and out of the gym efficiently in an appropriate time. If I'm waiting too long to use equipment, I may as well say goodbye to a majority of my lean gains. I have had to change my schedule around so that I can use the gym equipment at non-peak hours (late nights). This is extremely frustrating at the cost of $75/month. Honestly, it is completely unacceptable, and I hate to say that at all. Planet Fitness is NOT this bad.

You cannot pay for what you need in this membership. For example, if you want to only use the gym, the membership costs are still the same. I don't use anything else at Lifetime Fitness, such as the pool, basket ball courts, climbing wall, etc.

The advertising here is on a whole different level! It is crazy!!! There are ads in the bathrooms/locker rooms, hallway walls, gym, in my hair, etc. They must have their own product line or endorse other brands they sell inside their snack bar. They send email advertising like crazy also. I tried unsubscribing to the emails, but they keep coming. I made a new email account specifically for companies like this. Lastly, when you sign up you will be asked what your goals are for coming to Lifetime Fitness. Get ready for management to reach out to you with coaching options (I had even mentioned to them that I already had a coach. They listen to me so well).

Pros:

Outside of the issues mentioned above, this location is extremely clean and has a luxurious/premium feel to it. The male (since I'm a male) locker room is large and spacious. They have a dry sauna installed inside. On the flip-side of membership costs, I feel that I am better surrounded with people who have similar goals as myself. Not everyone is in shape, but I'd say a majority are. Planet Fitness had people coming and going throughout the year. I knew who the consistent members were.

Advice to management:

Tell corporate to calm the F down with the marketing campaign. Don't treat your members like another sale. Find out what is truly in their best interests for your club. They can make big boy/girl decisions...

Been a member 7 years. They've raised my rates every single year since they opened and I have not said a word about it. Like clockwork, members get an automated email from Lifetime every Fall saying advising their monthly rate will increase Jan 1. Usually a couple of bucks, but this year it was even more - right after I had just referred my husband who signed on for a solo membership.

When I asked for my rate to be changed back to it's original amount the GM Eric advised "corporate" recently raised rates for over 2,000 members and there is absolutely "nothing he can do but give me $60 "Lifetime Bucks."

Hey, thanks, raise my rates and give me Lifetime Bucks to use toward another service at your gym that will surely cost more than $60 bucks. My consolation prize was to give them more money.

Some people won't notice when their rates are raised. Others will complain or cancel. Then Lifetime pushes their sales team Dec/Jan during the "resolution blitz" to bring their numbers back up. You will be treated like a number...not a member. Every answer they give you is, "sorry it's Corporate, can't do anything about it."

When my husband cancelled his account in Oct through their GM Erick, he continued to get billed into Dec causing me to visit the club's customer service desk and ask them to resolve/fix it. Erick told him his account was cancelled and never cancelled it. The person I spoke with said people have come in with similar issues and that the GM Erick no longer works at the club. Moreover, after I addressed everything with their new manager Randy, he sounded like I was bothering him then JUSTIFIED the way we were treated saying Erick followed "normal operating procedure" with zero apology and resolution. Good luck to others who got hosed like we did. The management and staff are completely unresponsive and do not value their members - they value the bottom line and that's it. This club has become pretentious and arrogant.

We went to HealthRidge and the experience has been BY FAR the best decision we ever made - a completely different and better experience in every way.

What's even better is their social media/management team responds to negative reviews with their normal "canned" responses to try...

Overpriced and very pretentious. This "club" has tons of employees roaming around doing nothing. The family locker room always smells like urine, my guess is because there are showers and no toilets in most of the changing rooms. The locker room towels are several different shades of white, stained, and located on shelves that are unreachable for average height people. They have a cafe where they charge $10 for a small sized smoothie among other extremely overpriced items. The spa has plenty of employees but 0 customers most days because the price charged for each service is about 60% over market value for the area. The childcare area smells dirty and is very overloaded and understaffed when any classes are going on upstairs. The childcare hours are very sporadic and it is very hit or miss as to weather they will hold the children's activities they list on their app or decide to blow it off. The workout areas upstairs are full of "trainers" roaming around, not to help anyone, but to try to sell you their very expensive services. The equipment is nice, however you will have all eyes on you when you go to use it, as clusters of "trainers" like to stand at the desk and chat about the guests. The open equipment isn't always usable, because they hold paid classes in the middle of the workout areas and will tell you to move if you try to use any equipment in that area. The equipment seems to be clean, but you the guest are expected to clean each piece of equipment after use with their very generic, barely wet wipes located in dispensers, and strewn throughout the club. It is very difficult to get out of their "non contract" as other reviewers here have stated. Their "policies" change often and you may or may not get what you signed up for and are paying for. This location is about making money and a lot of it. You can expect to pay your monthly fees and plenty more for any other services they try to sell you. IOW it's an "exclusive club" where the customers are considered cash cows and nothing more. My opinion is to save yourself some money and a lot of headache and go down the street to the brand new new Lenexa Rec Center where the "amenities" are the same at a lower price with...